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LEE'S 
CENTENNIAL 

AN • ADDRESS • BY 
CHARLES • FRANCIS • ADAMS 

DELIVERED AT LEXINGTON VIRGINIA 

SATURDAY • JANUARY • 19 • 1907 

ON • THE INVITATION • OF 

THE • PRESIDENT • AND • FACULTY • OF 

WASHINGTON • AND LEE 

UNIVERSITY 









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LEE'S CENTENNIAL 



Having occasion once to refer in discussion to 
certain of the founders of our Massachusetts 
Commonwealth, I made the assertion that 
their force "lay in character;" and I added 
that in saying this I paid, and meant to pay, 
the highest tribute which in my judgment 
could be paid to a community or to its typical 
men. Quite a number of years have passed 
since I so expressed myself, and in those years 
I have grown older — materially older; but I 
now repeat even more confidently than I 
then uttered them, these other words — "The 
older I have grown and the more I have 
studied and seen, the greater in my esteem, 
as an element of strength in a people, has 
Character become, and the less in the con- 
duct of human affairs have I thought of mere 
capacity or even genius. With Character a 
race will become great, even though as stupid 
and unassimilating as the Romans; without 
Character, any race will in the long run prove 
a failure, though it may number in it individ- 
uals having all the brilliancy of the Jews, 
crowned with the genius of Napoleon." We 



2 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

are here to-day to commemorate the birth 
of Robert Edward Lee, — essentially a Man of 
Character. That he was such all I think recog- 
nize; for, having so impressed himself through- 
out life on his cotemporaries, he stands forth 
distinctly as a man of character on the page of 
the historian. Yet it is not easy to put in words 
exactly what is meant when we agree in attrib- 
uting character to this man or to that, or with- 
holding it from another; — conceding it, for 
instance, to Epaminondas, Cato and Well- 
ington, but withholding it from Themis- 
tocles, Caesar or Napoleon. Though we can 
illustrate what we mean by examples which 
all will accept, we cannot define. Emerson 
in his later years (1866) wrote a paper on 
*' Character;" but in it he makes no effort 
at a definition. "Character," he said, "de- 
notes habitual self-possession, habitual regard 
to interior and constitutional motives, a bal- 
ance not to be overset or easily disturbed by 
outward events and opinion, and by implica- 
tion points to the source of right motive. We 
sometimes employ the word to express the 
strong and consistent will of men of mixed 
motive; but, when used with emphasis, it 
points to what no events can change, that is a 
will built of the reason of things." The more 
matter-of-fact lexicographer defines Charac- 
ter as "the sum of the inherited and acquired 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 3 

ethical traits which give to a person his moral 
individuality." To pursue further the defini- 
tion of what is generally understood would 
be wearisome, so I will content myself with 
quoting this simile from a disciple of Emerson 
— "The virtues of a superior man are like the 
wind; the virtues of a common man are like 
the grass ; the grass, when the wind passes 
over it, bends." 

That America has been rich in these men 
of superior virtues before whom the virtues 
of the common man have bent, is matter of 
history. It has also been our making as a 
community. Such in New England was John 
Winthrop, whose lofty example still influences 
the community whose infancy he fathered. 
Such in New York was John Jay. Such, 
further south, was John Caldwell Calhoun, 
essentially a man of exalted character and 
representative of his community, quite irre- 
spective of his teachings and their outcome. 
Such unquestionably in Virginia were George 
Washington and John Marshall; and, more 
recently, Robert Edward Lee. A stock, of 
which those three were the consummate 
flower, by its fruits is known. 

Here to commemorate the centennial of the 
birth of Lee, I do not propose to enter into 
any eulogium of the man, to recount the well- 
known events of his career, or to estimate the 



4 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

final place to be assigned him among great 
military characters. All this has been suffi- 
ciently done by others far better qualified for 
the task. Eschewing superlatives also, I shall 
institute no comparisons. One of a commu- 
nity which then looked upon Lee as a renegade 
from the flag he had sworn to serve, and a 
traitor to the Nation which had nurtured him, 
in my subordinate place I directly confronted 
Lee throughout the larger portion of the War 
of Secession. During all those years there was 
not a day in which my heart would not have 
been gladdened had I heard that his also had 
been the fate which at Chancellorsville befell 
his great lieutenant; and yet more glad had 
it been the fortune of the command in which 
I served to visit that fate upon him. Forty 
more years have since gone. Their close finds 
me here to-day — certainly a much older, 
and, in my own belief at least, a wiser man. 
Nay, more ! A distinguished representative of 
Massachusetts, speaking in the Senate of the 
United States shortly after Lee's death upon 
the question of a return to Lee's family of 
the ancestral estate of Arlington, used these 
words: "Eloquent Senators have already 
characterized the proposition and the traitor 
it seeks to commemorate. I am not disposed 
to speak of General Lee. It is enough to say 
he stands high in the catalogue of those who 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 5 

have imbrued their hands in their country's 
blood. I hand him over to the avenging pen of 
History." It so chances that not only am I 
also from the State of Massachusetts, but, for 
more than a dozen years, I have been the 
chosen head of its typical historical society, 
— the society chartered under the name and 
seal of the Commonwealth considerably more 
than a century ago, — the parent of all simi- 
lar societies. By no means would I on that 
account seem to ascribe to myself any repre- 
sentative character as respects the employ- 
ment of History's pen, whether avenging or 
otherwise; ^ nor do I appear here as repre- 
sentative of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
ciety: but, a whole generation having passed 
away since Charles Sumner uttered the words 
I have quoted, I do, on your invitation, chance 
to stand here to-day, as I have said, both a 
Massachusetts man and the head of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, to pass 
judgment upon General Lee. The situation 
is thus to a degree dramatic. 

Though, in what I am about to say I shall 

^ Possibly, and more properly, this attribute might be con- 
sidered as pertaining rather to James Ford Rhodes, also a 
member of the Society referred to, and at present a Vice-Presi- 
dent of it. Mr. Rhodes' characterization of General Lee, and 
consequent verdict on the course pursued by him at the time 
under discussion, can be found on reference to his History of the 
United States (vol. iii, p. 413). 



6 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

confine myself to a few points only, to them I 
have given no little study, and on them have 
much reflected. Let me, however, once for all, 
and with emphasis, in advance say I am not 
here to instruct Virginians either in the his- 
tory of their State or the principles of Consti- 
tutional Law ; nor do I make any pretence to 
profundity whether of thought or insight. On 
the contrary I shall attempt nothing more 
than the elaboration of what has already been 
said by others as well as by me, such value or 
novelty as may belong to my share in the occa- 
sion being attributable solely to the point of 
view of the speaker. In that respect, I sub- 
mit, the situation is not without novelty; for, 
so far as I am aware, never until now has one 
born and nurtured in Massachusetts — a typi- 
cal bred-in-the-bone Yankee, if you please — 
addressed at its invitation a Virginian audi- 
ence, on topics relating to the War of Seces- 
sion and its foremost Confederate military 
character. 

Coming directly to my subject, my own 
observation tells me that the charge still most 
commonly made against Lee in that section of 
the common country to which I belong and 
with which I sympathize is that, in plain lan- 
guage, he was false to his flag, — educated at 
the national academy, an oflBcer of the United 
States Army, he abjured his allegiance and 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 7 

bore arms against the government he had 
sworn to uphold. In other words he was a 
mihtary traitor. I state the charge in the 
tersest language possible; and the facts are as 
stated. Having done so, and admitting the 
facts, I add as the result of much patient study 
and most mature reflection, that under similar 
conditions I would myself have done exactly 
what Lee did. In fact, I do not see how I, 
placed as he was placed, could have done 
otherwise. 

And now fairly entered on the first phase 
of my theme, I must hurry on; for I have 
much ground to traverse, and scant time in 
which to cover it. I must be concise, but 
must not fail to be explicit. And first as to 
the right or wrong of secession, this theoreti- 
cally; then practically, as to what secession 
in the year of grace 1861 necessarily involved. 

If ever a subject had been thoroughly 
thrashed out, — so thrashed out in fact as to 
offer no possible gleaning of novelty, — it 
might be inferred that this was that subject. 
Yet I venture the opinion that such is not al- 
together the case. I do so moreover not with- 
out weighing words. The diflBculty with the 
discussion has to my mind been that through- 
out it has in essence been too abstract, legal 
and technical, and not suflSciently historical, 
sociological and human. It has turned on 



8 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

the wording of instruments, in themselves 
not explicit, and has paid far too little regard 
to traditions and local ties. As matter of 
fact, however, actual men as they live, move 
and have their being in this world, caring 
little for parchments or theory, are the crea- 
tures of heredity and local attachments. 
Coming directly to the point, I maintain that 
every man in the eleven States seceding 
from the Union had in 1861, whether he would 
or no, to decide for himself whether to ad- 
here to his State or to the Nation; and I 
finally assert that, whichever way he decided, 
if only he decided honestly, putting self-inter- 
est behind him, he decided right. 

Paradoxical as it sounds, I contend, more- 
over, that this was indisputably so. It was 
a question of Sovereignty — State or Na- 
tional; and from a decision of that question 
there was in a seceded State escape for no 
man. Yet when the national Constitution 
was framed and adopted that question was 
confessedly left undecided; and intention- 
ally so left. More than this, even : the Federal 
\ Constitution was theoretically and avowedly 
based on the idea of a divided sovereignty, 
in utter disregard of the fact that, when a 
I final issue is presented, sovereignty does not 
1 admit of division. 

Yet even this last proposition, basic as it is. 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 9 

I have heard denied. I have frequently had 
it replied that, as matter of fact, sovereignty 
is frequently divided, — divided in domestic 
life, — divided in the apportionment of the 
functions of government. Those thus ar- 
guing, however, do so confusedly. They 
confound sovereignty with an agreed, but 
artificial, modus vivendi. The original con- 
stitution of the United States was, in fact, in 
this important respect just that, — a modus 
vivendi: — under the circumstances a most 
happy and ingenious expedient for over- 
coming an obstacle in the way of nationality, 
otherwise insurmountable. To accomplish 
the end they had in view, the framers had 
recourse to a metaphysical abstraction, under 
which it was left to time and the individual 
to decide, when the final issue should arise, 
if it ever did arise — as they all devoutly 
hoped it never would arise — where sover- 
eignty lay. There is nothing in connection 
I with the history of our development more 
/ interesting from the historical point of view 
I than the growth, the gradual development of 
I the spirit of nationality, carrying with it 
sovereignty. It has usually been treated as 
a purely legal question to be settled on the 
verbal construction of the instruments, — 
**We, the People," etc. Webster so treated 
it. In all confidence I maintain that it is 



10 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

not a legal question; it is purely an historical 
question. As such, furthermore, it has been 
decided, and correctly decided, both ways 
at different times in different sections, and 
at different times in opposite ways in the 
same section. 

And this was necessarily and naturally so; 
for, as development progressed along various 
lines and in different localities, the sense of 
allegiance shifted. Two whole generations 
passed away between the adoption of the 
Federal Constitution and the War of Seces- 
sion. When that war broke out in 1861 the 
last of the framers had been a score of years 
in his grave; but evidence is conclusive that 
until the decennium between 1830 and 1840 
the belief was nearly universal that in case 
of a final, unavoidable issue, sovereignty 
resided in the State, and to it allegiance was 
due. The law was so laid down in the Ken- 
tucky resolves of 1798; and to the law as 
thus laid down Webster assented. Chancellor 
Rawle so propounded the law; and such was 
the understanding of so unprejudiced and 
acute a foreign observer as De Tocqueville.* 

The technical argument — the logic of 

the proposition — seems plain and, to my 

thought, unanswerable. The original sov- 

jereignty was indisputably in the State; in 

1 Sec Appendix A. 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 11 

order to establish a nationality certain at- 
tributes of sovereignty were ceded by the 
States to a common central organization; 
all attributes not thus specifically conceded 
were reserved to the States, and no attri- 
butes of moment were to be construed as 
conceded by implication. There is no attri- 
bute of sovereignty so important as allegiance, 
— citizenship. So far all is elementary. Now 
we come to the crux of the proposition. Not 
only was allegiance — the right to define 
and establish citizenship — not among the 
attributes specifically conceded by the sev- 
eral States to the central nationality, but, 
on the contrary, it was explicitly reserved, 
the instrument declaring that "the citizens 
of each State" should be entitled to "all 
Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in 
the several States." Ultimate allegiance was, 
therefore, due to the State which defined 
and created citizenship, and not to the cen- 
tral organization which accepted as citizens 
whomever the States pronounced to be such.* 
Thus far I have never been able to see 
where room was left for doubt. Citizenship 

• See W. H. Fleming, Slavery and the Race Problem at the 
South, pp. 19, 20. An authoritative definition of United States 
citizenship, as distinct from the citizenship of a State, was first 
given in the fourteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution, 
ratified in 1868. See J. S. Wise, A Treatise on American Citi- 
zenship, pp. 6, 13, 31. 



12 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

was an attribute recognized by the Constitu- 
tion as originating with, and of course be- 
v' longing to, the several States. But, speaking 
/ historically and in a philosophical rather than 
in a legal spirit, it is little more than a com- 
monplace to assert that one great safeguard 
of the Anglo-Saxon race — what might al- 
most be termed its political palladium — 
\ has ever been that hard, if at times illogical, 
i common sense which, recognizing established 
i custom as a binding rule of action, found its 
embodiment in what we are wont with pride 
■ to term the Common Law. Now, just as there 
can, I think, be no question as to the source 
of citizenship and, consequently, as to sover- 
eignty, when the Constitution was originally 
adopted, there can be equally little question 
that during the lives of the two succeeding 
generations a custom of nationality grew up 
which became the accepted Common Law 
J of the land, and practically binding as such. 
This was true in the South as well as the North, 
though the custom was more hardened into 
accepted law in the latter than in the former; 
but the growth and acceptance as law of the 
custom of nationality even in the South was 
incontrovertibly shown in the very act of 
secession, — the seceding States at once crys- 
tallizing into a Confederacy. Nationality was 
assumed as a thing of course. 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 13 

But the metaphysical abstraction of a di- 
vided sovereignty, none the less, bridged the 
chasm. As a modus vivendi it did its work. 
I have called it a metaphysical abstraction; 
but it was also a practical arrangement re- 
sulting in great advantages. It might be 
illogical, and fraught with possible disputes 
and consequent dangers; but it was an insti- 
tution. And so it naturally came to pass that 
in many of the States a generation grew 
up, dating from the War of 1812, who, gravi- 
tating steadily and more and more strongly 
to nationality, took a wholly different view 
of allegiance. For them Story laid down the 
law; Webster was their mouthpiece; at one 
time it looked as if Jackson was to be their 
armed exponent. They were, moreover, 
I wholly within their right. The sovereignty 
was confessedly divided ; and it was for them 
\ to elect. The movements of both science 
I and civilization were behind the nationalists. 
; The railroad obliterated State lines, while it 
I unified the nation. What did the foreign im- 
j migrants, now swarming across the ocean, 
care for States ? They knew only the Nation. 
Brought up in Europe, the talk of State sov- 
ereignty was to them foolishness. Its alpha- 
bet was incomprehensible. In a word, it too 
*'was caviare to the general." 
Then the inevitable issue arose; and it 



7 



14 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

arose over African slavery; and slavery was 
sectional. The States south of a given line 
were arrayed against the States north of that 
line. Owing largely to slavery, and the prac- 
tical exclusion of immigrants because thereof, 
the States of the South had never undergone 
nationalization at all to the extent those of 
the North had undergone it. The growing 
influence and power of the national govern- 
ment, the sentiment inspired by the wars in 
which we had been engaged, the rapidly im- 
proving means of communication and inter- 
course, had produced their effects in the 
South; but in degree far less than in the North. 
Thus the curious result was brought about 
that, when, at last, the long deferred issue 
confronted the country, and the modus Vi- 
vendi of two generations was brought to a 
close, those who believed in national sov- 
ereignty constituted the conservative ma- 
jority, striving for the preservation of what 
then was, — the existing nineteenth-century 
Nation, — while those who passionately ad- 
hered to State sovereignty, treading in the foot- 
steps of the fathers, had become eighteenth- 
century reactionists. Legally, each had right 
on his side. The theory of a divided Sover- 
eignty had worked itself out to its logical con- 
sequence. ** Under which King, Bezonian .? " 
— and every man had to "speak or die." 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 15 

In the North the situation was simple. 
State and Nation stood together. The ques- 
tion of allegiance did not present itself, for 
the two sovereignties merged. It was other- 
wise in the South; and there the question 
became, not legal or constitutional, but prac- 

] tical. The life of the Nation had endured 
so long, the ties and ligaments had become 
so numerous and interwoven that, all the- 
ories to the contrary notwithstanding, a peace- 
able secession from the Union — a virtual 
exercise of State sovereignty — had become 
impossible. If those composing the several 
dissatisfied communities would only keep 
their tempers under restraint, and exercise 
an almost unlimited patience, a theoretical 
divided sovereignty, maintained through the 

j agency and intervention of the Supreme 
Court, — in other words the perpetuation 

I of the modus vivendi, — was altogether prac- 

' ticable; and probably this was what the 
framers had in mind under such a contin- 
gency as had now arisen. But that, after 
seventy years of Union and nationalization, 
a peaceable and friendly taking to pieces 
was possible, is now, as then it was, scarcely 
thinkable. Certainly, with a most vivid re- 
collection of the state of sectional feeling 
which then existed, I do not believe there was 
a man in the United States — I am confi- 



16 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

dent there was not a woman in the South 
— who fostered self-delusion to the extent 
of believing that the change was to come 
about without a recourse to force. In other 
words practical Secession was revolution the- 
oretically legal. Why waste time and breath 
in discussion ! — The situation becomes mani- 
festly impossible of continuance where the 
issue between heated men, with weapons 
handy, is over a metaphysical distinction in- 
volving vast material and moral consequences. 
Lee, with intuitive common sense, struck the 
nail squarely on the head when amidst the 
Babel of discordant tongues he wrote to his 
son — "It is idle to talk of secession;" the 
national government as it then was *' can 
only be dissolved by revolution." That 
struggle of dissolution might be longer and 
fiercer, — as it was, — or shorter, and more 
wordy than blood-letting, — as the seceding 
States confidently believed would prove to be 
the case, — but a struggle there would be. 

Historically, such were the conditions to 
which natural processes of development had 
brought the common country at the mid-de- 
cennium of the century. People had to elect; 
the modus vivendi was at an end. — Was the 
State sovereign ; or was the Nation sovereign ? 
And, with a shock of genuine surprise that 
any doubt should exist on that head, eleven 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 17 

States arrayed themselves on the side of the 
Sovereignty of the State and claimed the un- 
questioning allegiance of their citizens; and 
I think it not unsafe to assert that nowhere did 
the original spirit of State Sovereignty and 
allegiance to the State then survive in greater 
intensity and more unquestioning form than 
in Virginia, — the "Old Dominion," — the 
mother of States and of Presidents. And here 
I approach a sociological factor in the problem 
more subtle and also more potent than any 
legal consideration. It has no standing in 
Court: but the historian may not ignore it; 
while, with the biographer of Lee, it is cru- 
cial. Upon it judgment hinges. I have not 
time to consider how or why such a result 
came about, but of the fact there can, I hold, 
be no question, — State pride, a sense of 
individuality, has immemorially entered more 
largely and more intensely into Virginia and 
Virginians than into any other section or 
community of the country. Only in South 
Carolina and among Carolinians, on this 
continent, was a somewhat similar pride of 
locality and descent to be found. There was 
in it a jflavor of the Hidalgo, — or of the 
pride which the Macgregors and Campbells 
took in their clan and country. In other 
words, the Virginian and the Carolinian had 
in the middle of the last centurv not un- 



18 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

dergone nationalization to any appreciable 
extent. 

But this, it will be replied, though true of 
the ordinary man and citizen, should not have 
been true of the graduate of the military acad- 
emy, the officer of the Army of the United 
States. Winfield Scott and George H. Thomas 
did not so construe their allegiance; when the 
issue was presented, they remained true to 
their flag and to their oaths. Robert E. Lee, 
false to his oath and flag, was a renegade! 
The answer is brief and to the point : — the 
conditions in the several cases were not the 
same, — neither Scott nor Thomas was Lee. 
It was our Boston Dr. Holmes who long ago 
declared that the child's education begins 
about two hundred and fifty years before it is 
born; and it is quite impossible to separate 
any man — least of all, perhaps, a full- 
blooded Virginian — from his prenatal tra- 
ditions and living environment. From them 
he drew his being; in them he exists. Robert 
E. Lee was the embodiment of those condi- 
tions, the creature of that environment, — a 
Virginian of Virginians. His father was 
"Light Horse Harry" Lee, a devoted fol- 
lower of Washington; but in January, 1792, 
"Light Horse Harry" wrote to Mr. Madi- 
son: "No consideration on earth could induce 
me to act a part, however gratifying to me. 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 19 

which could be construed into disregard of, or 
I faithlessness to, this Commonwealth;" and 
! later, when in 1798 the Virginia and Ken- 
jtucky resolutions were under discussion, 
1 "Light Horse Harry" exclaimed in debate, 
** Virginia is my country; her will I obey, 
1 however lamentable the fate to which it may 
subject me." Born in this environment, nur- 
tured in these traditions, to ask Lee to raise 
his hand against Virginia was like asking 
Montrose or the MacCallum More to head a 
force designed for the subjection of the High- 
lands and the destruction of the clans. Where 
such a stern election is forced upon a man as 
\ then confronted Lee, the single thing the fair- 
3 minded investigator has to take into account is 
I the loyalty, the single-mindedness of the elec- 
; tion. Was it devoid of selfishness, — was it 
j free from any baser and more sordid worldly 
motive, — ambition, pride, jealousy, revenge 
or self-interest.? To this question there can, 
in the case of Lee, be but one answer. When, 
! after long and trying mental wrestling, he 
threw in his fate with Virginia, he knowingly 
sacrificed everything which man prizes most, 
— his dearly beloved home, his means of sup- 
port, his professional standing, his associates, 
a brilliant future assured to him. Born a 
slaveholder in a race of slaveholders, he was 
himself no defender, much less an advocate of 



20 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

slavery; on the contrary, he did not hesitate 
to pronounce it in his place " a moral and po- 
litical evil." Later, he manumitted his slaves. 
/ ^e"""''^ He did not believe in secession; as a right re- 
y served under the Constitution he pronounced 

^ it "idle talk:" but, as a Virginian, he also 

added, "if the Government is disrupted, I 
shall return to my native State and share the 
miseries of my people, and save in defence 
will draw my sword on none." Next to his 
high sense of allegiance to Virginia was Lee's 
pride in his profession. He was a soldier; as 
such rank, and the possibility of high com- 
mand and great achievement, were very dear 
to him. His choice put rank and command 
behind him. He quietly and silently made the 
greatest sacrifice a soldier can be asked to 
make. With war plainly impending, the fore- 
most place in the army of which he was an 
officer was now tendered him; his answer was 
to lay down the commission he already held. 
Virginia had been drawn into the struggle; 
and, though he recognized no necessity for the 
state of affairs, " in my own person," he wrote, 
" I had to meet the question whether I should 
take part against my native State ; I have not 
been able to make up my mind to raise my 
hand against my relatives, my children, my 
home." It may have been treason to take this 
\ position; the man who took it, uttering these 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 21 

words and sacrificing as he sacrificed, may 
have been technically a renegade to his flag, 
— if you please, false to his allegiance; but he 
stands awaiting sentence at the bar of history 
in very respectable company. Associated with 
him are, for instance, William of Orange, 
known as The Silent, John Hampden, the 
original Pater Patriae, Oliver Cromwell, the 
Protector of the English Commonwealth, Sir 
Harry Vane, once a governor of Massachu- 
setts, and George Washington, a Virginian of 
note. In the throng of other offenders I am 
also gratified to observe certain of those from 
whom I not unproudly claim descent. They 
were, one and all, in the sense referred to, false 
to their oaths — forsworn. As to Robert E. 
Lee, individually, I can only repeat what I have 
already said, — if in all respects similarly cir- 
cumstanced, I hope I should have been filial 
and unselfish enough to have done as Lee 
did." ^ Such an utterance on my part may be 
"traitorous; " but I here render that homage. 
In Massachusetts, however, I could not 
even in 1861 have been so placed; for, be it 
because of better or worse, Massachusetts was 
not Virginia ; — no more Virginia than Eng- 
land once was Scotland, or the Lowlands the 
Highlands. The environment, the ideals, were 

* See Lee at Appomattox and Other Papers (second edition), 
pp. 414-416. 



22 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

in no respect the same. In Virginia, Lee was 
Macgregor; and, where Macgregor sat, there 
was the head of the table. 

Into Lee's subsequent mihtary career, there 
is no call here to enter; nor shall I undertake 
to compare him with other great military 
characters whether contemporaneous or of 
all time. As I said when I began, the topic 
has been thoroughly discussed by others ; and, 
moreover, the time limitation here again con- 
fronts me. I must press on. Suffice it for 
me, as one of those then opposed in arms to 
Lee, however subordinate the capacity, to 
admit at once that, as a leader, he conducted 
operations on the highest plane. Whether 
acting on the defensive upon the soil of his 
native State, or leading his army into the 
enemy's country, he was humane, self-re- 
strained and strictly observant of the most 
advanced rules of civilized warfare. He re- 
spected the non-combatant; nor did he ever 
permit the wanton destruction of private pro- 
perty. His famous Chambersburg order was 
a model which any invading general would 
do well to make his own ; and I repeat now 
what I have heretofore had occasion to say, 
"I doubt if a hostile force of an equal size 
ever advanced into an enemy's country, or 
fell back from it in retreat, leaving behind 
less cause of hate and bitterness than did the 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 23 

Army of Northern Virginia in that memorable 
campaign which culminated at Gettysburg.'* 

And yet that Gettysburg campaign is an epi- 
sode in Lee's military career which I am loth 
wholly to pass over; for the views I entertain 
of it are not in all respects those generally held. 
Studied in the light of results, that campaign 
has been criticised; the crucial attack of Get- 
tysburg's third day has been pronounced a mur- 
derous persistence in a misconception; and, 
among Confederate writers especially, the effort 
has been to relieve Lee of responsibility for final 
miscarriage, transferring it to his lieutenants. 
As a result reached from participation in those 
events and subsequent study of them, briefly 
let me say I concur in none of these conclu- 
sions. Taking the necessary chances incident 
to all warfare on a large scale into considera- 
tion, the Gettysburg campaign was in my 
opinion timely, admirably designed, energeti- 
cally executed, and brought to a close with 
consummate military skill. A well considered 
offensive thrust of the most deadly character, 
intelligently aimed at the opponent's heart, its 
failure was of the narrowest ; and the disaster 
to the Confederate side which that failure 
might readily have involved was no less skil- 
fully than successfully averted. 

I cannot here and now enter into details. 
But I hold that credit, and the consequent 



/ 



24 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

measure of applause, in the outcome of that 
campaign belong to Lee's opponent, and not 
to him. All the chances were in Lee's favor, 
and he should have won a great victory; and 
Meade should have sustained a decisive de- 
feat. As it was, Meade triumphantly held his 
ground; Lee suffered a terrible repulse, his 
deadly thrust was foiled, and his campaign 
was a failure. 

So far as Lee's general plan of campaign, 
and the movements which culminated in the 
battle of Gettysburg, were concerned, in war, 
be it always and ever remembered, a leader 
must take some chances, and mistakes will 
occur; but the mistakes are rarely, if ever, all 
on one side. They tend to counterbalance each 
other; and, commanders and commanded 
being at all equal, not unseldom it is the bal- 
ance of misconceptions, shortcomings, mis- 
carriages, and the generally unforeseen and 
indeed unforeseeable, which tips the scale to 
victory or defeat. I have said that I proposed 
to avoid comparisons; at best such are in- 
vidious, and, under present circumstances, 
might from me be considered as doubtful in 
matter of taste. I think, however, some things 
too obvious to admit of denial; or, conse- 
quently, to suggest comparison. About every 
crisp military aphorism is as matter of course 
attributed to Napoleon; and so Napoleon is 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 25 

alleged first to have remarked that — "In 
war, men are nothing; a man is everything." 
And, as formerly a soldier of the Army of the 
Potomac, I now stand appalled at the risk 
I unconsciously ran anterior to July, 1863, 
when confronting the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia, commanded as it then was and as we 
were. The situation was in fact as bad with 
us in the Army of the Potomac as it was with 
the Confederates in the Southwest. The un- 
fortunate Pemberton there was simply not 
in the same class as Grant and Sherman, to 
whom he found himself opposed. Results 
there followed accordingly. So, in Virginia, 
Lee and Jackson made an extraordinary, a 
most exceptional combination. They out- 
classed McClellan and Burnside, Pope and 
Hooker; outclassed them sometimes terribly, 
sometimes ludicrously, always hopelessly : and 
results in that case also followed accordingly. 
That we were not utterly destroyed con- 
stitutes a flat and final refutal of the truth of 
Napoleon's aphorism. If we did not realize 
the facts of the situation in this respect, our 
opponents did. Let me quote the words of 
one of them: "There was, however, one 
point of great interest in [the rapid succession 
of the Federal commanders], and that was 
our amazement that an army could maintain 
even so much as its organization under the 



26 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

depressing strain of those successive appoint- 
ments and removals of its commanding gen- 
erals. And to-day (1903) I, for one, regard 
the fact that it did preserve its cohesion and 
its fighting power under, and in spite of such 
experiences, as furnishing impressive demon- 
stration of the high character and intense 
loyalty of our historic foe, the Federal Army 
of the Potomac." ^ 

Notwithstanding the fact that until the 
death of Jackson and the Gettysburg cam- 
paign we were thus glaringly outclassed, and 
at a corresponding disadvantage in every re- 
spect save mere men and equipment, the one 
noticeable feature of the succession of Vir- 
ginia campaigns from that of 1862 to that 
of 1864, was their obstinacy and indecisive 
character. The advantage would be some- 
times on one side, sometimes on the other: 
but neither side could secure an indisputable 
supremacy. This was markedly the case at 
Gettysburg; and yet, judging by the Con- 
federate accounts of that campaign which 
have met my eye, the inference would be that 
the Union forces labored under no serious 
disadvantage, while Lee's plans and tactics 
were continually compromised by untoward 
accident, or the precipitation or remissness 
of his subordinates. My study of what then 

^ Stiles, Four Years under Marse Robert, p. 21. 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 27 

took place leads me to a wholly opposite con- 
clusion. Well conceived and vigorously car- 
ried out as that campaign was on the part 
of the Confederate leader, the preponderance 
of the accidental — the blunders, the unfore- 
seeable, the misconceptions and the miscar- 
riages — was distinctly in Lee's favor. On 
any fair weighing of chances, he should have 
won a decisive victory; as a matter of actual 
outcome, he and his army ought to have been 
destroyed. As usual, on that theatre of war at 
the time, neither result came about. 

First as to the chapter of accidents, — the 
misconceptions, miscarriages and shortcom- 
ings. If, as has been alleged, an essential por- 
tion of Lee's force was at one time out of 
reach and touch, and if, at the critical moment, 
a lieutenant was not promptly in place at a 
given hour, on the Union side an unforeseen 
change of supreme command went into effect 
when battle was already joined, and the newly 
appointed commander had no organized staff; 
his army was not concentrated; his strongest 
corps was over thirty miles from the point of 
conflict; and the two corps immediately en- 
gaged should have been destroyed in detail 
before reinforcements could have reached 
them. In addition to all this — superadded 
thereto — the most skilful general and per- 
haps the fiercest fighter on the Union side was 



28 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

killed at the outset, and his line of battle 
was almost fatally disordered by the miscon- 
ception of a corps commander. 

The chapter of accidents thus reads all in 
Lee's favor. But, while Lee on any fair 
weighing of chances stands in my judgment 
more than justified both in his conception 
of the campaign and in every material strate- 
gic move made in it, he none the less funda- 
/mentally misconceived the situation, with 
\ consequences which should have been fatal 
both to him and to his command. Frederick 
did the same at Kunersdorf; Napoleon, at 
Waterloo. In the first place, Lee had at that 
time supreme confidence in his command; 
and he had grounds for it. As he himself 
then wrote — " There never were such men 
in an army before. They will go anywhere 
and do anything, if properly led." And, 
for myself, I do not think the estimate thus 
expressed was exaggerated; speaking delib- 
erately, having faced some portions of the 
Army of Northern Virginia at the time and 
having since reflected much on the occur- 
rences of that momentous period, I do not 
believe that any more formidable or better 
organized and animated force was ever set 
in motion than that which Lee led across 
the Potomac in the early summer of 1863. 
I It was essentially an army of fighters, — men 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 29 

who, individually or in the mass, could be 
depended on for any feat of arms in the power 
of mere mortals to accomplish. They would 
blanch at no danger. This Lee from experi- 
ence knew. He had tested them; they had 
full confidence in him. He also thought he 
knew his opponent; and here too his recent 
experience justified him. 

The disasters which had befallen the Con- 
federates in the Southwest in the spring and 
early summer of 1863 had to find compensa- 
tion in the East. The exigencies of warfare 
necessitated it. Some risk must be incurred. 
So Lee determined to strike at his opponent's 
heart. He had what he believed to be the 
better weapon; and he had reason for con- 
sidering himself incomparably the superior 
swordsman. He was; of that he had at Chan- 
cellors ville satisfied himself and the world. 
Then came the rapid, aggressive move; and 
the long, desperately contested struggle at 
Gettysburg, culminating in that historic 
charge of Pickett's Virginia division. Para- 
doxical as it may sound, in view of the result, 
that charge — what those men did — justified 
Lee. True, those who made the charge did 
not accomplish the impossible; but towards 
it they did all that mortal men could do. 
But it is urged that Lee should have recog- 
nized the impossible when face to face con- 



( 



"V 



30 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

fronted by it, and not have directed brave 
men to lay down their lives in the vain effort 
to do it. That is true; and, as Lee is said to 
have once remarked in another connection, 
"Even as poor a soldier as I am can gen- 
erally discover mistakes after it is all over." 
After Gettysburg was over, like Frederick 
at Kunersdorf and Napoleon at Waterloo, 
Lee doubtless discovered his mistake. It 
was a very simple one: he undervalued his 
opponent. The temper of his own weapon 
he knew; he made no mistake there. His 
mistake lay in his estimate of his antagonist: 
but that estimate again was based on his own 
recent experience, though in other fields. 

On the other hand, from the day I rode 
over the field of Gettysburg immediately 
following the fight, to that which now is, I 
have fully and most potently believed that 
only some disorganized fragments of Lee's 
army should after that battle have found 
their way back to Virginia. The war should 
have collapsed within sixty days thereafter. 
For eighteen hours after the repulse of Pickett's 
division, I have always felt and now feel, the 
fate of the Army of Virginia was as much in 
General Meade's hands as was the fate of 
the army led by Napoleon in the hands of 
Bliicher on the night of Waterloo. As an 
aggressive force, the Confederate army was 



1 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 31 



fought out. It might yet put forth a fierce 
defensive effort; it was sure to die game: but 
it was impotent for attack. Meade had one 
entire corps — perhaps his best, — his Sixth, 
commanded by Sedgwick — intact and in 
reserve. It lay there cold, idle, formidable. 
The true counter movement for the fourth 
day of continuous fighting would on Meade's 
part have been an exact reversal of Lee's 
own plan of battle for the third day. That 
plan, as described by Fitzhugh Lee, was simple. 
"His [Lee's] purpose was to turn the enemy's 
left flank with his First Corps, and, after 
the work began there, to demonstrate against 
his lines with the others in order to prevent 
the threatened flank from being reinforced, 
these demonstrations to be converted into 
a real attack as the flanking wave of battle 
rolled over the troops in their front." What 
Lee thus proposed for Meade's army on the 
third day, Meade should unquestionably 
have returned on Lee's army upon the fourth 
day. Sedgwick's corps should then have 
assailed Lee's right and rear. I once asked 
a leading Confederate general, who had been 
in the very thick of it at Gettysburg, what 
would have been the outcome had Meade, 
within two hours of the repulse of Pickett, 
ordered Sedgwick to move oflt to the left, and, 
occupying Lee's line of retreat, proceeded to 



32 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

envelop the Confederate right, while, early 
the following morning, Meade had com- 
manded a general advance. The answer I 
received was immediate: "Without ques- 
tion we would have been destroyed. We all 
that night fully expected it; and could not 
understand next day why we were unmo- 
lested. My ammunition " — for he was an 
officer of artillery — *'was exhausted." 

But in all this, as in every speculation of 
the sort, — and the history of warfare is 
replete with them, — the "if" is much in evi- 
dence; as much in evidence, indeed, as it 
is in a certain familiar Shakesperian dis- 
quisition. I here introduce what I have said 
on this topic simply to illustrate what may 
be described as the balance of miscarriages 
inseparable from warfare. On the other hand, 
the manner in which Lee met disaster at 
Gettysburg, and the combination of serene 
courage, and consequent skill, with which he 
extricated his army from a most critical situa- 
tion commands admiration. I would here say 
nothing depreciatory of General Meade. He 
was an accomplished officer as well as a 
brave soldier. Placed suddenly in a most 
trying position, — assigned to chief command 
when battle was already joined, — untried in 
his new sphere of action, and caught unpre- 
pared, — he fought at Gettysburg a stubborn. 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 33 

gallant fight. With chances at the beginning 
heavily against him, he saved the day. Per- 
sonally, I was later under deep obligation to 
General Meade. He too had character. None 
the less, as I have already pointed out, I fully 
believe that on the fourth day at Gettysburg 
Meade had but firmly to close his hand, and 
the Army of Northern Virginia was crushed. 
Perhaps under all the circumstances it was 
too much to have expected of him; certainly 
it was not done. Then Lee in turn did avail 
himself of his opportunity. Skilfully, proudly 
though sullenly, preserving an unbroken front, 
he withdrew to Virginia. That withdrawal 
was masterly. 

Narrowly escaping destruction at Gettys- 
burg, my next contention is that Lee and the 
Army of Northern Virginia never sustained 
defeat. Finally, it is true, succumbing to ex- 
haustion, to the end they were not overthrown 
in fight. And here I approach a large topic, 
but one closely interwoven with Lee's mili- 
tary career; in fact, as I see it, the explana- 
tion of what finally occurred. What then was 
it that brought about the collapse of the Army 
of Northern Virginia, and the consequent 
downfall of the Confederacy ? The literature 
of the War of Secession now constitutes a 
library in itself. Especially is this true of it in 
its military aspects. The shelves are crowded 



34 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

with memoirs and biographies of its generals, 
the stories of its campaigns, the records and 
achievements of its armies, its army corps and 
its regiments. Yet I make bold to say that 
no well and philosophically considered nar- 
rative of the struggle has yet appeared; nor 
has any satisfactory or comprehensive ex- 
planation been given of its extraordinary and 
unanticipated outcome. Let me briefly set 
it forth as I see it; only by so doing can I 
explain what I mean. 

Tersely put, dealing only with outlines, 
the southern community in 1861 precipitated 
a conflict on the slavery issue, in implicit 
reliance on its own warlike capacity and re- 
sources, the extent and very defensible char- 
acter of its territory, and, above all, on its 
complete control of cotton as the great staple 
textile fabric of modern civilization. That 
the seceding States fully believed in the jus- 
tice of their cause, and confidently appealed 
to it, I do not question, much less deny. For 
present purposes let this be conceded in full. 
But, historically, it is equally clear that to 
vindicate the right, next to their own man- 
hood and determination, they relied in all 
possible confidence on their apparently ab- 
solute control of one commercial staple. 
When, therefore, in 1858, with the shadow 
of the impending conflict darkening the hori- 



/i 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 35 

zon, a thoughtful senator from South Carolina, 
one on whom the mantle of Calhoun had 
fallen, declared that "Cotton is King," 
that "no power on earth dares to make war 
on it," that "without firing a gun, without 
drawing a sword," the cotton-producing 
South could, if war was declared upon it, 
bring "the whole world" to its feet, he only 
gave utterance to what was in the South ac- 
cepted as a fundamental article of political 
and economical faith. Suggesting the con- 
tingency that no cotton was forthcoming 
from the South for a period of three years, 
the same senator declared, " this is certain: 
England would topple headlong and carry 
the whole civilized world with her, save the 
South. Who," he then exclaimed, "that has 
looked on recent events, can doubt that cotton 
is supreme." In case of conflict, cotton, if it 
went forth, was to supply the South with the 
sinews of warfare; if it did not go forth the 
lack of it would bring about European civil 
commotion, and compel foreign intervention. 
In either case the South was secure. As to a 
maritime blockade of the South, shutting it up 
to die of inanition, the idea was chimerical. 
No such feat of maritime force ever had been 
accomplished, it was claimed ; nor was it pos- 
sible of accomplishment. To "talk of put- 
ting up a wall of fire around eight hundred 



36 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

and fifty thousand square miles" situated as 
the Confederacy was, with its twelve thousand 
miles of seacoast, was pronounced too "ab- 
surd" for serious discussion. And, certainly, 
that no such thing had ever yet been done was 
undeniable. But, even supposing it were pos- 
sible of accomplishment, the doing it would 
but the more effectively play the Confederate 
game. It would compel intervention. As 
well shut off bread from the manufacturing 
centres of Europe as stop their supply of cot- 
ton. In any or either event, and in any con- 
tingency which might arise, the victory of the 
Confederacy was assured. And this theory of 
the situation and its outcome was accepted by 
the southern community as indisputable. 

What occurred.? In each case that which 
had been pronounced impossible of occur- 
rence. On land the Confederacy had an 
ample force of men, they swarmed to the 
standards; and no better or more reliable 
material was ever gathered together. Well 
and skilfully marshalled, the Confederate 
soldier did on the march and in battle all that 
needed to be done. Nor were the two sides 
unequally matched so far as the land arrays 
were concerned. As Lee with his instinctive 
military sense put it even in the closing stages 
of the struggle — "The proportion of experi- 
enced troops is larger in our army than in that 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 37 

of the enemy, while his numbers exceed our 
own." And in warfare experience, combined 
with an advantageous defensive, counts for a 
great deal. This was so throughout the con- 
flict; and yet the Confederate cause sank in 
failure. It did so to the complete surprise of 
a bewildered world; for, in Europe, the ulti- 
mate success of the South was accepted as a 
foregone conclusion. To such an extent was 
this the case that the wisest and most far- 
seeing of English public men did not hesitate 
to stake their reputation for foresight upon it 
as a result. How was the wholly unexpected 
actual outcome brought about .'^ The simple 
answer is, — The Confederacy collapsed from 
inanition. Suffering such occasional reverses 
and defeats as are incidental to all warfare, it 
I was never crushed in battle or on the field, 
\ until its strength was sapped away by want of 
ffood. It died of exhaustion, — starved and 
: gasping! 

Take a living organism, whatever it may be, 
place it in a vessel hermetically sealed, and 
attach to that vessel an air pump. You know 
what follows. It is needless to describe it. No 
matter how strong or fierce or self-confident it 
may be, the victim dies; growing weaker by 
degrees, it finally collapses. That was the 
exact condition and fate of the Confederacy. 
What had been confidently pronounced im- 



38 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

possible was done. The Confederacy was 
sealed up within itself by the blockade; and 
the complete exclusion of cotton from the 
manufacturing centres of Europe did not 
cause revolution there, nor compel interven- 
tion here. Man's foresight once more came 
to grief. As usual, it was the unexpected 
which occurred. 

/ Thus the two decisive defeats of the Con- 
federacy, — those which really brought about 
its downfall and compelled Lee to lay down his 
arms, — were inflicted not before Vicksburg 
nor yet in Virginia, — not in the fi^eld at all ; 
they were sustained, the one, almost by default, 
on the ocean ; the other, most fatal of all, after 
sharpest struggle in Lancashire. The story 
of that Lancashire Cotton Famine of 1861 to 
1864 has never been adequately told in con- 
nection with our Civil War. Simply ignored 
by the standard historians, it was yet the Con- 
federacy's fiercest fight, and its most decisive 
as well as most far-reaching defeat. A mo- 
mentous conflict, the supremacy of the Union 
on the ocean hung on its issue; and upon that 
supremacy depended every considerable land 
operation : — the retention by the Confeder- 
acy of New Orleans, and the consequent con- 
trol of the Mississippi; Sherman's march to 
the sea; the movement through the Caro- 
linas; the operations before Petersburg; gen- 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 39 

erally, the maintenance of the Confederate 
armies in the field. It is in fact no exaggera- 
tion to assert that both the conception and the 
carrying out of every large Union operation of 
the war without a single exception hinged and 
depended on complete national maritime su- 
premacy. It is equally indisputable that the 
struggle in Lancashire was decisive of that 
supremacy. As Lee himself admitted in the 
death agony of the Confederacy, he had never 
believed it could in the long run make good its 
independence "unless Foreign Powers should, 
directly or indirectly, assist" it in so doing. 
Thus, strange as it sounds, it follows as a logi- 
cal consequence that Lee and his Army of 
Northern Virginia were first reduced to inani- 
tion, and finally compelled to succumb, as the 
result of events on the other side of the Atlan- 
tic, largely stimulated by a moral impulse over 
which they could exert no control. The great 
and loudly trumpeted cotton campaign of the 
Confederacy was its most signal failure; and 
that failure was decisive of the war. 

It is very curious, at times almost comical, 
to trace historical parallels. Plutarch is, 
of course, the standard exemplar of that sort 
of treatment. Among other great careers, 
Plutarch, as every college boy knows, tells the 
story of King Pyrrhus, the Epirot. A great 
captain, Pyrrhus devised a military formation 



40 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

which his opponents could not successfully 
face, and his career was consequently one of 
victory. But at last he met his fate. Assaulting 
the town of Argos, he became entangled in its 
streets; and, fighting his way out, he was 
struck down, and killed, by a tile thrown from 
a house-top by an Argive woman. The Con- 
federacy, and, through the Confederacy, Lee 
underwent a not dissimilar fate ; for, as an his- 
torical fact, it was a missile from a woman's 
hand which was decisive of that Lancashire 
conflict, and so doomed the Confederacy. A 
startling proposition ; but proof quite irrefuta- 
ble of it exists in a publication to which as an 
authority no Southern writer at least will take 
exception, the organ established in London by 
the agents of the Confederacy in 1862. Sus- 
tained as long as the conflict continued from 
Confederate funds, with a view to influencing 
European public opinion, the Index, as it 
was called, collapsed with the Confederacy in 
July, 1865. Naturally those in charge of it 
watched with feverish interest the progress of 
the cotton famine. Not only was the British 
pocket nerve touched at its most sensitive 
point, but in Lancashire starvation empha- 
sized financial distress. The pressure thus 
brought to bear on public opinion in Great 
Britain, and, through that public opinion, on 
the policy of Europe, was confidently counted 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 41 

on for results decisive of the American strug- 
gle. Ten years before Harriet Beecher Stowe 
had launched through the press her Uncle 
Tom's Cabin. Translated into every civil- 
ized tongue, it had soon become world litera- 
ture. In Great Britain, and especially in Lan- 
cashire, it ''carried the new gospel to every 
cabin in the land." Whoever in those days 
read anything, read Uncle Tom's Cabin. 
That it was a correct portrayal of conditions 
actually existing in the region wherein the 
incidents narrated were supposed to have 
occurred, is not now to be considered. That 
Uncle Tom himself was a type of his race, or 
indeed even a possibility in it, few would now 
be disposed to contend.^ Ethically, he was a 
Christian martyr of the most advanced descrip- 
tion and, on the large class who accepted the 
work as a correct portrayal, the pathetic story 
and cruel fate of the colored saint, moralist 
and philosopher made an indelible impression. 
Indeed, that female and sentimentalist por- 
trayal lent a force which has not yet spent it- 
self to the contention that the only difference 
between the Ethiopian and the Caucasian is 

1 J. C. Read, The Brothers' War, pp. 194-198. There is in 
Mr. Read's book, published fifty years after the appearance of 
Mrs. Stowe's historic tale and forty years after the Proclama- 
tion of Emancipation, a chapter (ix) entitled, " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," in which are to be found the views of an observant and 
reflecting Georgian on the statement in the text. 



42 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

epidermal; the negro being in fact merely a 
white man — a Yankee, if you please — who, 
having a black skin, has never been given a 
chance! Nay, more! if Uncle Tom and Le- 
gree were to be accepted as types, the black 
man was superior naturally to the white; for 
Uncle Tom was a fully developed moralist, 
while Legree was a demon incarnate. And 
this presentation of life and manners, and this 
portrayal of typical racial characters were in 
Lancashire implicitly accepted as gospel 
truth! Such indisputably was the fact; and, 
when the final issue was joined, the fact told 
heavily against the Confederacy. In contem- 
plation of it, — realizing the handicap thus 
imposed, the burden of which at the moment 
the historian has since ignored, and few con- 
sequently now appreciate, — the writers for 
the Index fairly cried aloud in agony. Their 
wail, long repeated, has in it as now read an 
element of the comic. The patience of the vic- 
tims of the cotton famine, they declared, was 
the extraordinary feature of the foreign situa- 
tion; and the agents of the Confederacy noted 
with unconcealed dismay the absence of po- 
litical demonstrations calculated to urge on a 
not unwilling Palmerston ministry "its duty 
to its suffering subjects." There was but one 
way of accounting for it. Uncle Tom and 
Legree were respectively doing their work. So 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 43 

it was that the Index despairingly at last 
declared — "The emancipation of the negro 
from the slavery of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's he- 
roes is the one idea of the millions of British 
who know no better, and do not care to know." 
Like the Cherubim with the flaming sword 
this sentiment stood between Lancashire and 
cotton; and the inviolate blockade made pos- 
sible the subjugation of the Confederacy. 
With Pyrrhus, it was the tile thrown by a 
woman from the house-top; with Lee, it was 
a book by a woman issued from the printing 
press! The missiles were equally fatal. It 
was only a difference of time, and its changed 
conditions. 

Foreign intervention being thus withheld, 
and the control of the sea by the Union made 
absolute, the blockade was gradually per- 
fected. The fateful process then went steadily 
on. Armies might be resisted in the field; the 
working of the air pump could not be stopped : 
and, day and night, season after season, the 
air pump worked. So the atmosphere of the 
Confederacy became more and more attenu- 
ated, respiration sensibly harder. Air-hole on 
air-hole was closed. First New Orleans fell; 
then Vicksburg, and the Mississippi flowed 
free; next Sherman, securely counting on the 
control of the sea as a base of new operations 
on land, penetrated the vitals of the Confeder- 



44 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

acy; then, relying still on maritime coopera- 
tion, he pursued his almost unopposed way 
through the Carolinas; while Grant, with his 
base secure upon the James and Fortress 
Monroe, beleaguered Richmond. Lee with his 
Army of Northern Virginia calmly, but watch- 
fully and resolutely, confronted him. The 
Confederate lines were long and thin, guarded 
by poorly clad and half -fed men. But, veter- 
ans, they held their assailants firmly at bay. 
As Lee, however, fully realized, it was only a 
question of time. The working of the air 
pump was beyond his sphere either of in- 
fluence or operations. Nothing could stop it. 
As early as the close of 1863 Lee wrote of his 
men, ''Thousands are bare-footed, a greater 
number partially shod, and nearly all without 
overcoats, blankets, or warm clothing;" and 
later, in the dead of winter, referring to the 
elementary necessities of any successful war- 
fare, he said, — "The supply, by running the 
blockade, has become so precarious that I 
think we should turn our attention to our own 
resources ... as a further dependence upon 
those from abroad can result in nothing but 
increase of suffering and want." The conclu- 
sion here drawn, while necessary, was ex- 
tremely suggestive. "Our own resources!" 
— the Confederacy had always prided itself 
on being a purely agricultural community. 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 45 

With institutions patriarchal in character, it 
had looked upon the people of the North as its 
agents and factors, and those of Europe as its 
skilled workmen and artisans; and now that 
community shut up within its own limits, un- 
der conditions of warfare active and severe, 
had only itself to rely upon for a supply of 
everything its defenders needed, from muni- 
tions to shoes, from blankets to medicines and 
even soap. Viewed in a half century's per- 
spective, the situation was simply and mani- 
festly impossible of continuance. To it there 
could be but one outcome; and when at last 
on the 16th of January, 1865, the telegraph 
announced the fall of Fort Fisher, the Con- 
federacy felt itself hermetically sealed. Wil- 
mington, its last breathing hole, was closed. 
Still, not the less for that, the air pump kept 
on in its deadly silent work. 

Three months later the long-delayed in- 
evitable occurred. The collapse came. That 
under such conditions it should have been so 
long in coming is now the only legitimate 
cause of surprise. That adversity is the test 
of man is a commonplace; that Lee and his 
Army of Northern Virginia were during the 
long, dragging winter of 1864-5 most direfuUy 
subjected to that test need not here be said; 
any more than it is needful to say that they 
bore the test manfully. But the handwriting 



46 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

was on the wall; the men were taxed beyond 
the limits of human endurance. And Lee 
knew it. ''Yesterday, the most inclement day 
of the winter," he reported on February 8, 
1865, the right wing of his army "had to be 
retained in line of battle, having been in the 
same condition the two previous days and 
nights. . . . Under these circumstances, 
heightened by assaults and fire of the enemy, 
some of the men had been without meat for 
three days, and all were suffering from re- 
duced rations and scant clothing, exposed 
to battle, cold, hail and sleet. . . . The 
physical strength of the men, if their courage 
survives, must fail under this treatment." 
If it was so with the men, with the animals it 
was even worse. "Our cavalry," he added, 
"has to be dispersed for want of forage." 
Even thus Lee's army faced an opponent 
vastly superior in numbers, whose ranks were 
being constantly replenished; a force armed, 
clothed, equipped, fed and sheltered as no 
similar force in the world's history had ever 
been before. I state only indisputable facts. 
Lee proved equal to even this occasion. Bear- 
ing a bold, confident front, he was serene and 
outwardly calm ; alert, resourceful, formidable 
to the last, individually he showed no sign of 
^ weakness, not even occasional petulance. In- 
I spired by his example, the whole South seemed 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 47 

to lean up against him in implicit, loving re- 
liance. It was a superlative tribute to Charac- 
ter. Finally, when in April the summons to 
conflict came, the Army of Northern Virginia, 
the single remaining considerable organized 
force of the Confederacy, seemed to stagger 
to its feet, and, gaunt and grim, shivering 
with cold and emaciated with hunger, worn 
down by hard, unceasing attrition, it faced 
its enemy, formidable still. As I have since 
studied that situation, listened to the ac- 
counts of Confederate officers active in the 
closing movements, and read the letters 
written me by those of the rank and file, it 
has seemed as if Lee's command then co- 
hered and moved by mere force of habit. 
Those composing it failed to realize the utter 
hopelessness of the situation — the dispar- 
ity of the conflict. I am sure Jefferson Davis 
failed to realize it; so, I think, in less de- 
gree, did Lee. They talked, for instance, of 
recruits and of a levy in mass ; Lee counselled 
the arming of the slaves; and when, after 
Lee had surrendered, Davis on the 10th of 
April, 1865, held his last war conference at 
Greensboro, he was still confident he would 
in a few weeks have another army in the field, 
and did not hesitate to express his faith that 
"we can whip the enemy yet, if our people 
will turn out." I have often pondered over 



48 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

what Davis had in mind when he ventured 
this opinion; or what led Lee to advocate the 
enlistment of negroes. Both were soldiers; 
and, besides being great in his profession, 
Lee was more familiar than any other man 
alive with actual conditions then existing 
in the Confederate camps. Both Davis and 
Lee, therefore, must have known that, in those 
final stages of the conflict, if the stamp of a 
foot upon the ground would have brought a 
million men into the field, the cause of the 
Confederacy would thereby have been in no 
wise strengthened ; on the contrary, what was 
already bad would have been made much 
worse. For, to be effective in warfare, men 
must be fed and clothed and armed. Orga i- 
ized in commands, they must have rations 
as well as ammunition, commissary and quar- 
termaster trains, artillery horses and forage. 
In the closing months of the Civil War, both 
Lee and Davis knew perfectly well that they 
could not arm, nor feed, nor clothe, nor 
transport the forces already in the field ; they 
were themselves without money, and the 
soldiers most inadequately supplied with arms, 
clothing, quartermaster or medical supplies, 
commissariat or ammunition. Notoriously, 
those then on the muster-rolls were going 
home, or deserting to the enemy, as the one 
alternative to death from privation — hunger 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 49 

and cold. If then, a million, or even only a 
poor hundred thousand fresh recruits had 
in answer to the summons swarmed to the 
lines around Richmond, how would it have 
bettered the situation? An organized army 
is a mighty consumer of food and material; 
and food and material have to be served out to 
it every day. It must be fed as regularly as 
the sun rises and sets. And the organized 
resources of the Confederacy were exhausted; 
its granaries — Georgia and the valley of the 
Shenandoah — were notoriously devastated 
and desolate; its lines of communication and 
supply were cut, or in the hands of the invader. 

Realizing this, when the time was ripe, 
L^e rose to the full height of the great occa- 
sion. The value of Character made itself felt. 
The service Lee now rendered to the common 
country, the obligation under which he placed 
us whether of the North or South, has not, I 
think, been always appreciated; and to over- 
state it would be difficult. Again to put on re- 
cord my estimate of it brings me here to-day. 

That the situation was to the last degree 
critical is matter of history. Further organ- 
ized resistance on the part of the Confeder- 
acy was impossible. The means for it did 
not exist; could not be had. Cut off com- 
pletely from the outer world, the South was 
consuming itself, — feeding on its own vitals. 



50 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

The single alternative to surrender was dis~ 
bandment and irregular warfare. As General 
Johnston afterwards wrote, "without the 
means of purchasing supplies of any kind, or 
procuring or repairing arms, we could con- 
tinue the war only as robbers or guerrillas." 
But that it should be so continued was wholly 
possible; nay more, it was in the line of 
precedent, — it had been done before, and, 
more than once, it has since been done, 
notably in South Africa. It was, moreover, 
the course advocated by many southern 
participants in the struggle as that proper 
to be pursued; and that it would be pursued 
was accepted as of course by all foreign ob- 
servers, and by the organ of the Confederacy 
in London. "A strenuous resistance and not 
surrender," it was there declared, "was the 
unalterable determination of the Confeder- 
ate authorities." Lee's own son, then in the 
Army of Northern Virginia, but by chance 
not included in the surrender, has since de- 
scribed how surprised and incredulous he was 
when news of it first reached him; and, "not 
believing for an instant that our struggle 
was over," he made his way at once to Jeffer- 
son Davis, at Greensboro. At the time of his 
capture Davis himself, wholly unsubdued in 
spirit, was moving in the direction of the 
Mississippi intent on organizing resistance in 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 51 

I Texas, — a resistance which the writers of the 
Index confidently predicted would "be fierce, 
/ferocious and of long duration," — "a suc- 
\ cessful or at least a protracted resistance." 

Indeed, had the veil over the immediate 
/future then been lifted, and the outrages, and 
I humiliations worse than outrage, of the period 
of so-called reconstruction, but actual servile 
I domination, now to ensue revealed itself, no 
/ room for doubt exists that the dread alter- 
I native would have been adopted. Even as 
it was, the scales hung trembling. Anything 
or everything was possible; even that mad 
pistol shot of the theatrical fool which five 
days later so irretrievably complicated a 
delicate and dangerous situation. None the 
less, what Lee and Grant had done at Appo- 
mattox on April 9 could not be wholly un- 
done even by the deed in Ford's theatre of 
April 14; much had been secured. Of Ap- 
pomattox, and what there occurred, I do not 
care here to speak. I feel I could not speak 
adequately, or in words sufficiently simple; 
for, in my judgment, there is not in our 
whole history as a people any incident so 
creditable to our manhood, — so indicative 
of our racial possession of Character. Marked 
throughout by a straightforward dignity of 
personal bearing and propriety in action, 
it was marred by no touch of the theatrical, 



52 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

no effort at posturing. I know not to which of 
the two leaders, there face to face, preference 
should be given. They were thoroughly typi- 
cal, the one of Illinois and the New West, 
the other of Virginia and the Old Dominion. 
Grant was considerate and magnanimous, — 
restrained in victory; Lee, dignified in de- 
feat, carried himself with that sense of ab- 
/ solute fitness which compelled respect. Ver- 
\ily ! — "he that ruleth his spirit is better than 
I he that taketh a city"! 

The lead that day given by Lee proved de- 
cisive of the course to be pursued by his fel- 
lows with arms in their hands. At first, and 
for a brief space, there was in the Confed- 
erate councils much diversity of opinion as 
to what should or could be done. Calm and 
dignified in presence of overwhelming dis- 
aster, the voice of Jefferson Davis was that 
of Milton's "scepter'd king:"— "My sen- 
tence is for open war!" Lee was not there; 
none the less, Lee, absent, prevailed over 
Davis. The sober second thought satisfied 
all but the most extreme that what he had 
done they best might do. Thus the die was 
cast. And now, forty years and more after 
the event, it is appalling to reflect what in all 
human probability would have resulted had 
the choice then been other than it was, — had 
Lee's personality and character not intervened. 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 53 

The struggle had lasted four full years; the 
assassination of Lincoln was as oil on the 
Union fire. With a million men, inured to war, 
on the national muster rolls, men impatient 
of further resistance, accustomed to license 
and now educated up to a belief that war 
was Hell, and that the best way to bring it 
to a close was to intensify Hell, — with such 
a force as this to reckon with, made more 
reckless in brutality by the assassin's sense- 
less shot, the Confederacy need have looked 
for no consideration, no mercy. Visited by 
the besom of destruction, it would have been 
harried out of existence. Fire and sword 
sweeping over it, what the sword spared the 
fire would have consumed. Whether such 
an outcome of a prolonged conflict — what 
was recently witnessed in South Africa — 
would in its result have been more morally 
injurious to the North than it would have 
been physically destructive to the South, 
is not now to be considered. It would, how- 
ever, assuredly have come about. 

From that crown of sorrows Lee saved the 
common country. He was the one man in the 
Confederacy who could exercise decisive in- 
I fluence. It was the night of the 8th of April, 
I lacking ten days only of exactly four full years, 
— years very full for us who lived through 
them — since that not dissimilar night when 



54 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

Lee had paced the floor at Arlington, com- 
muning with himself over the fateful issue, a 
decision on which was then forced upon him. 
A decision of even greater import was now to 
be reached, and reached by him. A com- 
mander of the usual cast would under such 
circumstances have sought advice — perhaps 
support; at least, a divided responsibility. 
Even though himself by nature and habit a 
masterful man and one accustomed to direct, 
he would have called a council, and barkened 

' to those composing it. This Lee did not do. 

1 A singularly self-poised man, he sought no 

I external aid. Sitting before his bivouac fire 

I at Appomattox he reviewed the situation. 

I Doing so, as before at Arlington, he reached 
his own conclusion. That conclusion he him- 
self at the time expressed in words, brief, in- 
deed, but vibrating with moral triumph: — 

! "The question is, is it right to surrender this 
SLTiny? If it is right, then I will take all the 

, responsibility." The conclusion reached at 
Arlington in the April night of 1861 to some 
seems to have been wrong — inexcusable even; 
all concur in that reached before the Appo- 
mattox camp-fire in the April vigils of 1865. 
He then a second time decided; and he de- 
cided right. 

His work was done; but from failure he 
plucked triumph. Thenceforth Lee wore 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 55 

defeat as 't were a laurel crown. A few days 
later a small group of horsemen appeared 
in the morning hours on the further side of 
the Richmond pontoons across the James. 
By some strange intuition it became known 
that General Lee was of the party; and, 
silent and uncovered, a crowd — Virginians 
all — gathered along the route the horsemen 
would take. "There was no excitement, no 
hurrahing; but as the great chief passed, 
a deep, loving murmur, greater than these, 
rose from the very hearts of the crowd. 
Taking off his hat, and simply bowing his 
head, the man great in adversity passed si- 
lently to his own door; it closed upon him; 
and his people had seen him for the last time 
in his battle harness." 

From the day that he affixed his signature 
to the terms of surrender submitted to him by 
Grant at Appomattox to the day when he drew 
a dying breath at Lexington, Lee's subsequent 
course was consistent. In his case there was 
no vacillation, no regretful glances backward 
thrown. When, four months after the last hos- 
tile shot was fired, he was invited to assume 
the presidency of this college, though then 
under indictment, in flagrant disregard of the 
immunity assured him when he gave his pa- 
role, he briefly set forth his views. *'I think 
it," he wrote, '* the duty of every citizen, in the 



56 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

present condition of the country, to do all in 
his power to aid in the restoration of peace and 
harmony, and in no way to oppose the policy 
of the State or General Governments directed 
to that object." And, four days later, writ- 
ing to the Confederate Governor of Virginia, 
he said — "The duty of [Virginian] citizens 
appears to me too plain to admit of doubt. All 
should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the 
effects of war, and to restore the blessings of 
peace. They should remain if possible in the 
country; promote harmony and good feeling; 
qualify themselves to vote, and elect to the 
State and general legislatures wise and patri- 
otic men, who will devote their abilities to the 
healing of all dissensions. I have," he added, 
"invariably recommended this course since 
the cessation of hostilities, and have en- 
deavored to practice it myself." Here was a 
complete exposition of duty, combined with 
abnegation of self; the purest patriotism, it 
was also the concentrated essence of states- 
manship. He counselled with a wisdom not 
less profound because unconscious ; and what 
he said evinced that underlying common sense 
which in politics avails more than genius. 

Five years of life and active usefulness yet 
remained to General Lee — years in my judg- 
ment most creditable to himself, the most use- 
ful to his country of his whole life; for, during 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 57 

them, he set to Virginia and his own people a 
high example, — an example of lofty charac- 
ter and simple bearing. Uttering no com- 
plaints, entering into no controversies, he was 
as one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing. 
His blood and judgment were well commin- 
gled; and so it fell out that he accepted for- 
tune's buffets and rewards with equal thanks. 
His record and appearance during those final 
years are pleasant to dwell upon, for they 
reflect honor on our American manhood. 
Turning his face courageously to the future, 
he uttered no word of repining over the past. 
Yet, like the noble Moor, his occupation also 
was gone — 

" The royal banner, and all quality, 
Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war! " 

But with Lee this did not imply 

" Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content! " 

Far from it ; for as the gates closed on the old 
occupation, they opened on a new. And it was 
an occupation through which he gave to his 
country. North and South, a priceless gift. 

Speaking advisedly and on full reflection, I 
say that of all the great characters of the Civil 
War, and it was productive of many whose 
names and deeds posterity will long bear in 
recollection, there was not one who passed 
away in the serene atmosphere and with the 



58 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

gracious bearing of Lee. From beginning to 
end those parting years of his will bear closest 
scrutiny. There was about them nothing 
venal, nothing querulous, nothing in any way 
sordid or disappointing. In his case there was 
no anti-climax; for those closing years were 
dignified, patient, useful ; sweet in domes- 
ticity, they in all things commanded respect. 
It is pleasant to catch glimpses of the erst- 
while commander in that quiet Virginia life. 
There is in the picture something altogether 
human — intensely sympathetic. "Traveller," 
he would write, "is my only companion; I 
may also say my pleasure. He and I, when- 
ever practicable, wander out in the mountains 
and enjoy sweet confidence." Or again we 
see him, always with Traveller, the famous 
old charger this time "stepping very proudly," 
as his rider showed those two little sunbon- 
neted daughters of a professor, astride of a 
plodding old horse, over a pleasant road, quite 
unknown to them. Once more in imagina- 
tion we may ride, his companions, through 
those mountain roads of his dearly loved Vir- 
ginia, or seek shelter with him and his daugh- 
ter from a thunder-shower in the log cabin, 
the inmates of which are stunned when too late 
they realize that the courtly, gracious intruder 
was no other than the idolized General Lee. 
I Indifferent to wealth, he was scrupulous as 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 59 

j respects those money dealings a carelessness 
I in regard to which has embittered the lives 
1 of so many of our public men, as not infre- 
i quently it has tarnished their fame. Lee's 
*l career will be scrutinized in vain for a sug- 
\ gestion even of the sordid, or of an obligation 
I he failed to meet. He was nothing if not self- 
respecting. He once wrote to a member of his 
family '"vile dross' has never been a drug 
with me," yet his generosity as a giver from 
his narrow means was limited only by his 
resources. Restricting his own wants to ne- 
cessities, he contributed, to an extent which 
excites surprise, to both public calls and pri- 
vate needs. But the most priceless of those 
contributions were contained in the precepts 
he inculcated and in the unconscious example 
he set during those closing years. 

Lee was at the head of Washington College 
from October, 1865, to October, 1870; a very 
insufficient time in which to accomplish any 
considerable work. A man of fast advancing 
years, he also then had sufficient cause to feel 
a sense of lassitude. He showed no signs of 
it. On the contrary, closely studied, those 
years, and Lee's bearing in them, were in cer- 
tain respects the most remarkable as well as 
the most creditable of his life; they impressed 
unmistakably upon it the stamp of true great- 
ness. Unable to pass them wholly over, I shall 



60 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

deal very briefly with them. His own means 
of subsistence having been swept away by 
war, — the property of his wife as well as his 
own having been sequestered and confiscated 
in utter disregard not only of law, but — I 
add it regretfully — of decency, — a mere 
pittance, designated in courtesy ** salary," 
under his prudent management was made to 
suflSce for the needs of an establishment the 
quiet dignity of which even exceeded its severe 
simplicity. Within five months of the down- 
fall of the Confederacy, he addressed himself 
to his new vocation. Coming to it from crush- 
ing defeat, about him there was nothing sug- 
gestive of disappointment; and thereafter 
through public trials and private misfortunes 
— for it pleased Heaven to try him with afflic- 
tions — he bore himself with serene patience, 
and a mingled firmness and sweetness of tem- 
per to which mere words fail to do justice. 
More than that, becoming interested in his 
new work, he evinced, it would seem, as the 
head of a college a grasp of educational prob- 
lems not less clear and intelligent than he had 
previously shown of strategic conditions. It 
was indeed extraordinary that a man edu- 
cated in a military school, first an engineer, 
then an officer of cavalry, and finally a general 
in charge of large field operations, should, 
when approaching his sixtieth year, have 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 61 

given proof of such mental activity and 
freshness. Fully realizing the needs and 
requirements of the present age, the former 
commandant of West Point was the ardent 
advocate of complete classical and literary 
culture. Utterly out of sympathy with the mod- 
ern advocates of materialistic education, he 
yet recognized the fact that material well-being 
is, for a people, the condition of all high civili- 
zation; and, accordingly, sought to provide, in 
the institution of which he was the head, all 
means for the development of science, and its 
practical application. With a large and cor- 
rect conception he planned, therefore, to 
connect all the departments of literary, scien- 
tific, and professional education, and to con- 
solidate them under a common organization. 
He thus outlined a true university. So, at an 
early day he called into existence, as adjuncts 
of the college he found prostrate and well-nigh 
moribund, schools of Applied Mathematics, 
of Engineering and of Law; while later he 
submitted to its Board of Trustees a matured 
scheme for the complete development of the 
scientific and professional departments. His 
death, just before he had yet reached the 
grand climacteric, prevented the full develop- 
ment of his great conception. None the less, 
he had shown himself fully equal to the new 
demand upon him. 



62 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

The most marked feature of his educational 
career was, however, the moral influence he 
exerted on the student body, — what has most 
fitly been described by one associated with him 
as *'the mighty influence of his personal char- 
acter." Here, as in the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia, this was all-powerful. It was sorely 
needed, too; for the young men of the South 
were wild, and resented efforts at restraint. 
Grown up in an environment of warfare and 
consequent violence, they were somewhat dis- 
posed to take matters into their own hands, — 
to be, in a word, a law unto themselves; but, 
under Lee's presidency, the elevation of tone 
in this respect, and the consequent improve- 
ment in student conduct were, we are on good 
evidence assured, marked and rapid. Acts of 
disorder became infrequent; and in the latter 
years of Lee's brief administration it is said 
that "hardly a single case of serious discipline 
occurred." A Boston student of Washington 
College in those years — sent there because 
of the feelings of profound respect for Lee en- 
tertained by his Northern father — has since 
borne witness to me of the personal interest 
taken by Washington's president in the indi- 
vidual students. In close sympathy with the 
modern university spirit, the youth in ques- 
tion was, I have reason to suppose, far more 
addicted to athletics than to his text-books. 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 63 

**This lack of proficiency in my studies," he 
has recently written me, "was, of course, a 
matter for which I was frequently called into 
the presence of General Lee; and I fully 
appreciate now, though I did not then, the 
difficulties under which he labored; for, if he 
had expelled me, as under similar circum- 
stances he undoubtedly would have expelled 
any Southern student, it would have been 
considered a factional matter. He would 
plead most earnestly with me always that I 
should attend more to my studies and less to 
athletics, and never a harsh word during the 
entire period." 

It remains to assign due weight and value 
to these precepts and this great example at 
just that juncture and from just that man. 
And here, bearing in mind the common coun- 
try, — the community to which I belong as 
well as that I now address, — I feel I tread on 
dangerous ground. What I must necessarily 
say will be very susceptible of misconstruc- 
tion. Speaking, however, in the true historical 
spirit, as throughout I have sought to do, I 
must deal with this topic also as best I can. 

Because no blood flowed on the scaffold, 
and no confiscations of houses or lands 
marked the close of our war of Secession, 
it has always been assumed by us of the vic- 
torious party that extreme, indeed unprece- 



64 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

dented, clemency was shown to the van- 
quished, and that subsequently they had no 
good ground of complaint or suflBcient cause 
for restiveness. That history will accord 
assent to this somewhat self-complacent con- 
viction is open to question. On the contrary, 
it may not unfairly be doubted whether a 
people prostrate after civil strife has often 
received severer measure than was inflicted 
on the so-called reconstructed Confederate 
States during the years immediately succeed- 
ing the close of strife. Adam Smith somewhere 
defined Rebels and Heretics as "those un- 
lucky persons who, when things have come 
to a certain degree of violence, have the mis- 
fortune to be of the weaker party." Spolia- 
tion and physical suffering have immemo- 
rially been their lot. The Confederate, it is 
true, when he ceased to resist, escaped this 
visitation in its usual and time-approved 
form. Nevertheless, he was by no means ex- 
empt from it. In the matter of confiscation, 
it has been computed that the freeing of the 
slaves by act of war swept out of existence 
property valued at some two thousand mil- 
lions; while, over and above this, a system 
of simultaneous reconstruction subjected the 
disfranchised master to the rule of the en- 
franchised bondsman. For a community 
conspicuously masterful, and notoriously 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 65 

■ quick to resent affront, to be thus placed by 
alien force under the civil rule of those of a 
different and distinctly inferior race, only 
lately their property, is not physical torment, 
it is true, but that it is mild or considerate 
treatment can hardly be contended. Yet this 
— slave confiscation, and reconstruction under 
African rule — was the war penalty imposed 
on the States of the Confederacy. That the 
policy inspired at the time a feeling of bitter 
resentment in the South was no cause for 
wonder. Upon it time has already recorded 
\ a verdict. Following the high precedent set 
; at Appomattox it was distinctly unworthy. 
Conceived in passion, it ignored both science 
and the philosophy of statesmanship; worse 
yet, it was ungenerous. Lee, for instance, 
again setting the example, applied formally 
for amnesty and a restoration of civil rights 
within two months of his surrender. His ap- 
plication was silently ignored; while he died 
"a prisoner on parole," the suffrage denied 
him was conferred on his manumitted slaves. 
Verily, it was not alone the base Indian of 
the olden time who "threw a pearl away 
richer than all his tribe"! 

But on such a rejection and choice of ma- 
terial as this was the so-called reconstruction 
edifice based ; nor is it matter for wonder that 
it speedily crumbled away. It was under 



66 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

these conditions that Lee's bearing and ex- 
ample were of special national importance. 
The one political result the States of the Con- 
federacy should ever have kept steadily in 
view after strife closed was the restoration 
of local self-government; and that, under 
the traditions and political instincts of the 
American community, was sure to come. It 
was only a question of time; and patience 
and self-restraint were the two qualities most 
sure to hasten the steps of time. "We shall 
have to be patient," Lee in March, 1866, 
wrote to old companions in arms, "and 
suffer for a while at least ; . . . I hope, in 
time, peace will be restored to the country, 
and that the South may enjoy some measure 
of prosperity. I fear, however, much suffer- 
ing is still in store for her, and that her people 
must be prepared to exercise fortitude and 
forbearance." To those to whom it was 
addressed, no wiser or more tactful counsel 
could at that juncture (March, 1866) have 
been imparted; for, while Lee himself pos- 
sessed those virtues to a well-nigh unexampled 
degree, patience and self-restraint have not 
been generally accepted as most conspicuous 
among the many manly and ennobling quali- 
ties of the race to which Lee belonged. 

In the passage with which I began, it was 
observed by Emerson that "Character de- 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 67 

notes habitual self-possession, habitual re- 
gard to interior and constitutional motives, 
a balance not to be overset or easily disturbed 
by outward events and opinion.'* To my 
knowledge I never saw General Lee ; I cer- 
tainly never stood in his presence, nor ex- 
changed a word with him. On the few oc- 
casions when I was a guest in his house, 
he chanced to be absent. Even that was long 
ago; while he and his family still lived at 
Arlington. Thus I know him only by report, 
and through his letters. But, if the report of 
those who did know him well, and the evi- 
dence of what he wrote, may be relied on, 
I "habitual self-possession, habitual regard to 
] interior and constitutional motives, a balance 
\ not to be overset or easily disturbed by out- 
/ ward events and opinion," were his to an 
eminent degree, — a degree which his harsh- 
est and most prejudiced critic could not ig- 
nore. That, himself a devout man and by 
conviction sincerely religious, he was neither 
ashamed nor afraid so publicly to profess 
himself, may be read in his repeated army 
orders; or, to such as prefer there to look for 
it, in his family letters. What more expres- 
sive of a profound religious faith could be 
imagined than these words written in the 
very shadow of Gettysburg's disaster to the 
dying wife of his wounded and captured son ? 



68 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

— *'In his own good time He will relieve us, 
and make all things work together for our 
good, if we give Him our love and place in 
Him our trust." That his immediate family 
circle regarded him with the affectionate devo- 
tion founded on respect which is the surest 
indication of those sterling and fundamental 
qualities which alone can cause a man to 
seem a hero to those near to him, — the con- 
fidants of his privacy, — appears from those 
family letters and recollections which have 
been so freely published. That he impressed 
himself on those about him in his professional 
and public life to an uncommon extent, — 
that the soldiers of the Army of Northern 
Virginia as well as those of his staff and in 
high command felt not only implicit and un- 
questioning confidence in him but to him 
a strong personal affection, is established by 
their concurrent testimony. He, too, might 
well have said with Brutus: — 

" My heart doth joy that yet in all my life 
I found no man but he was true to me. 
I shall have glory by this losing day." 

Finally, one who knew him well has written 
of him — "He had the quiet bearing of a 
powerful yet harmonious nature. An un- 
ruffled calm upon his countenance betokened 
the concentration and control of the whole 
being within. He was a kingly man whom 



LEE'S CENTENNIAL 69 

all men who came into his presence expected 
to obey." That he was gifted in a prominent 
degree with the mens aequa in arduis of the 
Roman poet, none deny. 

And now, Virginians, a word with you in 
closing: "Show me the man you honor; 
I know by that symptom, better than by any 
other, what kind of man you yourself are. 
For you show me then what your ideal of 
I manhood is; what kind of man you long 
possibly to be, and would thank the Gods, 
with your whole soul, for being if you could. 
Whom shall we consecrate and set apart as 
one of our sacred men.^ Sacred; that all 
men may see him, be reminded of him, and, 
by new example added to old perpetual 
precept, be taught what is real worth in man. 
Whom do you wish to resemble ? Him you 
set on a high column, that all men looking 
at it, may be continually apprised of the duty 
you expect from them." 

"The virtues of a superior man are like 
the wind; the virtues of a common man are 
like the grass; the grass, when the wind 
passes over it, bends." 



APPENDIX 

(Page 10) 

In regard to the early utterances of Mr. Webster, the 
following is from a speech by him in the National 
House of Representatives, December 9, 1814, It should 
be borne in mind that this speech was delivered in 
the midst of the gloomiest period of the War of 1812- 
15, four months after the battle of Bladensburg and 
the capture of Washington, and one month before the 
British were defeated below New Orleans. The speech 
was first published (1902) by C. H. Van Tyne, in his 
edition of the Letters of Daniel Webster (p. 67). 

"In my opinion [the law under consideration for 
compulsory army and military service] ought not to be 
carried into effect. The operation of measures thus 
unconstitutional and illegal ought to be prevented, by 
a resort to other measures which are both constitu- 
tional and legal. It will be the solemn duty of the State 
Governments to protect their own authority over their 
own Militia, and to interpose between their citizens and 
arbitrary power. These are among the objects for which 
the State Governments exist; and their highest obli- 
gations bind them to the preservation of their own 
rights and the liberties of their people. I express these 
sentiments here. Sir, because I shall express them to 
my constituents. Both they and myself live under a 
Constitution which teaches us, that 'the doctrine of 
non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression 
is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and 



72 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

happiness of mankind.' With the same earnestness 
with which I now exhort you to forbear from these 
measures, I shall exhort them to exercise their unques- 
tionable right of providing for the security of their own 
liberties." 

William Rawle was in his day an eminent Philadel- 
phia lawyer, and Chancellor of the Law Association of 
Philadelphia. The principal author of the revised code 
of Pennsylvania, he stood in the foremost rank of 
American legal luminaries in the first third of the nine- 
teenth century. His instincts, sympathies, and connec- 
tions were all national. His View of the Constitution, 
published in Philadelphia in 1825, was the standard 
text-book on the subject until the publication of 
Story's Commentaries, in 1833. It has been asserted 
that Rawle's View was used as a text-book for the 
instruction of the students at West Point until after the 
year 1840. (See prefatory matter to republication of 
paper entitled Sectional Misunderstandings, by Robert 
Bingham, in North American Review of September, 
1904.) 

"If a faction should attempt to subvert the govern- 
ment of a State for the purpose of destroying its re- 
publican form, the paternal power of the Union could 
thus be called forth to subdue it. Yet it is not to be 
understood that its interposition would be justifiable 
if the people of a State should determine to retire from 
the Union, whether they adopted another or retained 
the same form of government. (Page 289.) . . . 

"The States, then, may wholly withdraw from the 
Union; but while they continue they must retain the 
character of representative republics." (Page 290.) 

"The secession of a State from the Union depends 



APPENDIX 73 

on the will of the people of such State. The people 
alone, as we have already seen, hold the power to alter 
their constitution. The Constitution of the United 
States is, to a certain extent, incorporated into the con- 
stitutions of the several States by the act of the people. 
The State legislatures have only to perform certain 
organical operations in respect to it. To withdraw 
from the Union comes not within the general scope of 
their delegated authority. There must be an express 
provision to that effect inserted in the State constitu- 
tions. This is not at present the case with any of them, 
and it would perhaps be impolitic to confide it to them. 
A matter so momentous ought not to be entrusted to 
those who would have it in their power to exercise it 
lightly and precipitately upon sudden dissatisfaction, 
or causeless jealousy, perhaps against the interests and 
the wishes of a majority of their constituents. 

"But in any manner by which a secession is to take 
place, nothing is more certain than that the act should 
be deliberate, clear, and unequivocal. The perspicuity 
and solemnity of the original obligation require cor- 
respondent qualities in its dissolution. The powers of 
the general government cannot be defeated or im- 
paired by an ambiguous or implied secession on the 
part of the State, although a secession may perhaps be 
conditional. The people of the State may have some 
reasons to complain in respect to acts of the general 
government; they may in such cases invest some of 
their own officers with the power of negotiation, and 
may declare an absolute secession in case of their fail- 
ure. Still, however, the secession must in such case be 
distinctly and peremptorily declared to take place on 
that event; and in such case, as in the case of an un- 
conditional secession, the previous ligament with the 



74 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

Union would be legitimately and fairly destroyed. But 
in either case the people is the only moving power." 
(Pages 295, 296.) 

De Tocqueville cannot, of course, be cited as an 
authority on American Constitutional Law. Never- 
theless, an acute observer, his evidence carries great 
weight on the question of the views generally current 
on all constitutional questions at the time he collected 
the materials for his great work (1831-32). The follow- 
ing extracts bearing upon the topic under discussion 
are found in the translation of Democracy in America 
by Henry Reeve (London, 1889). 

"In America, each State has fewer opportunities of 
resistance and fewer temptations to non-compliance; 
nor can such a design be put in execution (if indeed it 
be entertained) without an open violation of the laws 
of the Union, a direct interruption of the ordinary 
course of justice, and a bold declaration of revolt; in a 
word, without taking a decisive step which men hesi- 
tate to adopt." . . . "Here the term Federal govern- 
ment is clearly no longer applicable to a state of things 
which must be styled an incomplete national govern- 
ment : a form of government has been found out which 
is neither exactly national nor federal; but no further 
progress has been made, and the new word which will 
one day designate this novel invention does not yet 
exist." (Vol. i, pp. 156, 157.) 

"The Union is a vast body which presents no definite 
object to patriotic feeling. The forms and limits of the 
State are distinct and circumscribed; since it repre- 
sents a certain number of objects which are familiar 
to the citizens and beloved by all. It is identified with 
the very soil, with the right of property and the do- 



APPENDIX 75 

mestic affections, with the recollections of the past, 
the labours of the present, and the hopes of the future. 
Patriotism, then, which is frequently a mere exten- 
sion of individual egotism, is still directed to the State, 
and is not excited by the Union." (Vol. i, p. 394.) 

"The Federal Government is, therefore, notwith- 
standing the precautions of those who founded it, 
naturally so weak that it more peculiarly requires the 
free consent of the governed to enable it to subsist. 

"If the Union were to undertake to enforce the 
allegiance of the Confederate States by military means, 
it would be in a position very analogous to that of Eng- 
land at the time of the War of Independence." (Vol. 
i, p. 395.) 

"The Union was formed by the voluntary agree- 
ment of the States; and, in uniting together, they have 
not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been re- 
duced to the condition of one and the same people. 
If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from 
the contract, it would be diflBcult to disprove its right 
of doing so; and the Federal Government would 
have no means of maintaining its claims directly, 
either by force or by right." (Vol. i, p. 396.) 

"It appears to me unquestionable that if any por- 
tion of the Union seriously desired to separate itself 
from the other States, they would not be able, nor 
indeed would they attempt, to prevent it; and that 
the present Union will only last as long as the States 
which compose it choose to continue members of the 
confederation." (Vol. i, p. 397.) 

"The dangers which threaten the American Union 
do not originate in the diversity of interests or of opin- 
ions, but in the various characters and passions of 
the Americans. The men who inhabit the vast terri- 



76 LEE'S CENTENNIAL 

tory of the United States are almost all the issue of 
a common stock; but the effects of the climate, and 
more especially of slavery, have gradually introduced 
very striking differences between the British settler 
of the Southern States and the British settler of the 
North." (Vol. i, p. 402.) 

"I think that I have demonstrated that the existence 
of the present confederation depends entirely on the 
continued assent of all the confederates; and, start- 
ing from this principle, I have inquired into the causes 
which may induce the several States to separate from 
the others. The Union may, however, perish in two 
different ways : one of the confederate States may choose 
to retire from the compact, and so forcibly to sever 
the Federal tie; and it is to this supposition that most 
of the remarks that I have made apply: or the au- 
thority of the Federal Government may be progres- 
sively entrenched on by the simultaneous tendency 
of the united republics to resume their independence." 
(Vol. i, p. 412.) 

"The Constitution had not destroyed the distinct 
sovereignty of the States; and all communities, of 
whatever nature they may be, are impelled by a secret 
propensity to assert their independence." (Vol. i, p. 
415.) 



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